Freeze
by Hickumu
Summary: Loki escapes imprisonment in Asgard, and flees to Jotunheim. Time passes, and he thinks Asgard means to leave him exiled. But one day, in his lonely wanderings, he comes across Thor, half dead in the snow. Against his better judgment, Loki reaches out to save the man who was once his brother. Thor doesn't recognize him, at first, and matters spiral out of control from there.


Loki was a giant in the blood. He could survive in Jotunheim without any problem. Even if he didn't want to be here, even if he hated these cold, howling wastes, hated the part of himself that let him survive here without even feeling the cold…he'd run here trusting that he wouldn't be followed.

He should have known better. There was no limit to Thor's capacity for _idiocy_.

The snow would cover him, soon. Cover and consume him, as it had so many of Jotunheim's would-be invaders. He wasn't moving anymore to keep it off of him. The mighty Thor of Asgard was just a huddled, collapsed shape in the whiteness. All Loki would have to do was wait a little longer, and he would be free of this particular family tie forever. It wouldn't even be his fault. It would be Thor's own fault, for following him.

For trying to bring him home. Home to be punished, imprisoned, probably forgotten about, but home in the way this cold place never would be.

Loki sighed, hating himself, hating his brother, hating the fact that he still couldn't quite manage to stop thinking of Thor as his brother, and started to pick his way down the slope of the mountain. He had a lot of explanations for himself about why he was going. To check that Thor was really dead before he moved on, to drag him in out of the cold, to kill him with his own hands. Even Loki didn't know which lie was true, just that he couldn't not go.

It had been so long since he'd bothered looking like an Asgardian that he didn't even think about how he must look to Thor.

Loki finally reached his brother, kneeling down next to him in the snow and rolling him over, shaking some of that snow off of him in the process. He checked Thor's pulse, and for a moment felt nothing. But then, before he could even manage to fully process the idea of Thor being dead, he realized that his heart was still beating, the blood was still flowing, just slowed by the cold, the warmth of life nearly smothered by the ice.

Thor was still alive. The question remained of what Loki was going to do about it.

Loki sighed, and set to work trying to drag Thor away. He was too heavy to lift, especially as dead weight, but his cave wasn't that far up the mountain, he could leave Thor there out of the wind, maybe start a fire, and just move on. He didn't want the prince's death added to his list of crimes, on top of everything he'd _actually_ done, and Loki knew that it would be if Thor didn't make it home. Heimdall would be watching.

It wasn't a graceful process, or an easy one, and so Loki wasn't the least bit surprised when Thor wound up being jostled into wakefulness. In fact, he was grateful for it, for more reasons than one. "Finally," he sighed, out of breath by then, letting Thor fall back to the snow. "You can walk with me. It isn't much farther, and…"

Thor slowly pushed himself up on his hands and knees. Loki saw his grip tighten around Mjolnir's handle. And then Thor looked up at him, and Loki had just enough time to realize that his brother wasn't really seeing him at all.

All Thor saw was a frost giant standing over him, and a pathetically small one, at that. Only just coming out of unconsciousness, he probably hadn't even registered that Loki had spoken.

Loki just barely managed to stumble back enough as Mjolnir came swinging at the side of his head. The blow would probably have killed him outright if it had connected, if Thor had been stronger and he'd been just a little slower. Even then, shock made him slow and clumsy, and Loki overbalanced and collapsed heavily on his back in the snow.

He looked up to see Thor looming over him, little more than a dark shape in the midst of the blizzard. A monster out of a nightmare, and Loki had experienced this particular nightmare so many times before. Desperately, panicking, he tried to will himself awake. He didn't wake up.

Frozen with fear, Loki could only come up with one last thing to maybe save himself as Thor raised the hammer for another strike.

"Brother, _please_…"

Two words that had been a trick once, but he'd never been more sincere here and now, and he'd never been more terrified.

And something in that reached Thor, before he could bring the hammer down. He faltered, and in his eyes recognition slowly dawned. Recognition, followed by horror. "_Loki?!_"

He fell to his knees beside Loki, reaching out to try and help him. Loki smacked Thor's hands away without thinking. "Do _not_ touch me!" he snarled, piercingly aware that he was still shaking with the aftershocks of fear. It was only with a supreme effort of will that he met Thor's gaze at all. He saw regret, there, clear as day. It wasn't enough to calm him, not as he remembered that those same familiar eyes had been looking at him scant seconds before with absolutely no recognition and a desire to see him dead.

"Brother, I…"

He flinched, to hear Thor call him that. It wasn't _fair_, damn it, that that word should still affect him so. "I should have left you here to _freeze!_" Loki snapped, scrambling to his feet and away, needing that distance more than anything there and then. Thor, damn him, remained where he was in the snow, his head bowed.

Loki almost managed to turn his back on Thor, on everything he'd already left behind him, when he heard Thor speak, so softly that he was almost but not quite lost in the wind. "Yes, you should have."

He had only ever heard Thor sound so ashamed once, when he'd been facing down the Destroyer, offering up his own life to appease Loki and spare the lives of his friends and that damnable woman. But this time, Loki didn't have the Destroyer between him and Thor. The words fell on him, and there was no escaping them, and no pretending he couldn't hear.

Why someone who actually had a family who loved him and friends who cared about him would willingly offer to give up their life to an outcast animal like Loki had become was utterly beyond him, and probably always would be. He didn't understand why Thor even _cared_.

But he did. That much was obvious even to Loki. And so, growling with frustration, Loki turned back to Thor, and knelt down beside him just long enough to heave his brother's arm over his shoulder. He could bear a little of Thor's weight, if Thor was conscious to bear the rest. "Come on."

Thor did his best to stumble along with him. Loki did not set a slow pace, wanting to be away from Thor as soon as possible even if he found himself unwilling to actually leave him. "Thank you," Thor said. "I know you have no reason to save me."

"Please try not to remind me."

"But, Loki, I…I never meant to cause you harm. In the snow, I did not know you at first. I am so…"

"Yes, you did," Loki cut him off, not sure he could stand to hear Thor apologize. "You knew me for a monster."

"No! I only thought…"

"You thought I was a frost giant." Loki laughed bitterly. "I am. Climb. It will warm you."

Thankfully, Thor had to focus all the rest of his energy on climbing up the rest of the short slope to the cave. They were both spared having to grapple with their tangled feelings for a little while, and there was only the pure simplicity of moving on and up.

There was nothing to burn in Jotunheim, because the giants that lived here had no need of fire. Heat and light were things that just did not exist, here. So there was no way to start a fire and save any strangers from dying in the cold.

No way for anyone besides Loki.

It was harder than it had once been, and that scared him to realize. But still, with a bit of focusing, he was able to conjure up a small orb of crackling blue flame, hovering near the ceiling of the cave after they'd settled within it. The space was small enough that it was warmed well enough by the little fire, and much too small for two people. Loki curled up by the entrance, staring out at the wastes, blocking the howling wind with his body and drinking in the cold and trying to get as much distance as he could.

"Why do you look like that?" Thor finally asked.

"Does my true shape offend?" Loki asked lightly. On some level, he knew he was being petty, even childish. Then he remembered the look in Thor's eyes as he'd lashed out with Mjolnir, and stopped caring.

"Stop that," Thor said sternly. "I only ask because I know how much you _loathe_ this form. Are you hurt? Has something interfered with your magic?"

Loki felt the other man looking at him, felt his gaze burning on the back of his neck. He didn't meet the other man's gaze, unwilling to confront what he might see there. "…no." There was no point in lying. Even he could never lie about this, and especially not to Thor. "I may detest this body, but I detest the idea of dying even more. The Jotun would kill an Asgardian on sight. But if all they see is one of their own, even a _runt_, they are content to let me get away. I never stay to fight. I'm not strong enough."

"You have been running all this time?"

Loki could have slapped Thor for the pity he heard there in his voice. Instead, he snapped. "Isn't that what fugitives do? It is better than being trapped in my comfortable box. If I had to pace the length of the walls one more time, I would have gone truly mad."

"You know why you were caged." Thor's voice was almost gentle, and more than a little sad.

"My crimes were read out to me in some detail, yes. I remember. You were there. I have only chosen my own way to live out my sentence. Do not pretend that you have come to bring me home. You have only come to try and put me _back_."

Thor didn't deny it. The silence stretched out between them like a rift in the world, and Loki finally found it in himself to look at the man he'd grown up with. Even if they hadn't known one another their entire lives, Thor made it easy for people to read him like a book. He barely had it in him to lie or conceal his true feelings.

Thor looked _pained_.

"At least in Asgard, you would be safe," he said quietly.

This bit of naiveté was strangely touching. It was sweet, really, that Thor seemed to honestly believe that. "Not everyone bears me the love you still seem to," Loki said, with the air of a teacher instructing an enthusiastic but dense student. "If it can even still be called that." He remembered Thor's words, the first and probably last time he had been allowed out of his cell. _If you betray me, I will kill you myself_. The words chilled him still when all the cold of Jotunheim couldn't touch him, even though he'd expected them for a long, long time. "Here, I am alone, and no danger to anyone. Isn't that enough?"

"They will kill you, one day. If you mean to rally the Jotun, they will not heed you. Not after you killed Laufey."

"Oh, killing Laufey would impress them immensely, if they knew I was the cause. The reason they would not follow me is the same reason Laufey left me to die. I am simply too small and weak for their liking."

It wasn't entirely true. Loki thought that he could control the giants, if he wanted to. They had almost no knowledge of magic, here, and his might frighten them into line. But he didn't want to rule Jotunheim. There was a strange beauty to this place that spoke to something in his blood, but he bore his true people no love, and was glad of every day that went by when he didn't have to see them.

"Is exile really so better than imprisonment, to worry you so?" he asked, tilting his head as he regarded his brother with genuine curiosity. "Is it my safety that concerns you, or my plans? You can rest easy then on both fronts, brother – I am as safe as I would be in Asgard, and I have no plans beyond remaining so. Return home and tell the Allfather truthfully, so that he might rest easy as well, and have Heimdall turn his gaze to other threats. True threats."

"I will not leave you," said Thor resolutely.

"You do not have a choice. When I leave, you will not be able to follow. You cannot survive alone here – I can. Call for Heimdall, and have him bring you back." When Thor still didn't look convinced, Loki added: "I won't save you if you fall again." He wasn't sure he believed himself, but maybe Thor would.

"I told Heimdall not to watch for me. I did not want him to send anyone after me. I wanted to speak to you myself."

"…and you are a fool if you think Heimdall obeyed." Thor's stubborn foolishness brought a pang to Loki's heart. It should have been maddening, or laughable to see. Instead, it was…nostalgic. A reminder that some things didn't change, of a thousand years of living with and tempering Thor's irrationality. Once, he'd thought that Thor would be lost without him.

Once, but now he knew better, as he did so many other things.

"If you fear me, kill me now. Begin what you started before you recognized me. If you care, then let me go. Because to spend one more day of all the days I was to be confined to that cell…" Loki shuddered, disgust and something like fear roiling in his chest. To have his shamed and beaten state on display like that had been hell. The fact that they'd tried to make it _comfortable_ for him had been somehow worse. It had made it harder to take that final step of escape, and that had scared him. The _bonds_ he still felt scared him, because they felt like chains. "…you might have at least made the walls solid." He could have at least been alone with his thoughts, if they'd done that, had some small barrier between him and the reminder of all he'd lost.

But that wouldn't have been much of a punishment.

"I will not kill you," said Thor firmly.

"Then your path is clear."

It was harder than it should have been, but Loki straightened up and turned away, meaning to leave him there. The fire would burn for a while, yet, and Heimdall would be watching no matter what Thor asked. If he died now, it was his own fault. Loki couldn't be there to pull him out of the fire anymore.

But then Thor grabbed his hand, and the shock of his brother's touch made something ripple and _change_ inside him, something that he had almost forgotten was there. Loki felt himself shift, back into the shape and appearance that he'd thought of as _his_ for most of his life. He looked down to see _his_ hand, _his_ skin, and heard himself gasp in surprise and something like wonder.

There had been too many days where he'd wondered if he would ever wear this skin again. He'd never understood too much about the magic that had let him look like an Asgardian. He'd been afraid to look too much at it, for fear of unraveling it.

And he'd thought he was content to let it fade, but suddenly finding himself back in his own body shocked him to the core, and stopped him in his tracks.

Loki looked back at Thor. Thor stared desperately back at him, and spoke two words:

"Brother, _please_."


End file.
